To take advantage of opportunities/solve problems, the need for a greater than local/cross-boundary approach can be seen. Regional cooperation is the nominal tool, yet the goal is to be greater; have greater capacity, resources, market,…. Greater is regional; working across boundaries achieves it. Cooperation is possible when people recognize such regional community. This is regional intelligence: Greater Communities solving problems, of which security is foremost; altogether “community motive.”

Vital Signs presents a statistical outlook on different sectors of community life such as work, the gap between the rich and the poor, learning, health and wellness, housing, getting around, safety, the environment, arts and culture, getting started in the community as well as belonging and leadership.

The population of the metropolitan region in 2006 stood at 3, 6 inhabitants. Last year only international migrations showed a net positive balance. Over ten years the proportion of people aged 75 years and over grew by 1.5% while those under 25years fell by 2.3 %.

The report highlights a number of positive indicators on several fronts:

- The unemployment rate continued its decline and now nears the Canadian average, something which has not been seen for at least twenty years.

- Over the last ten years, the proportion of Montrealers having completed postsecondary studies has increased significantly from 43% to 55%, higher than the Canadian average of 48.8%.

- In 2004, Montreal ranked first in Canada in the field of innovation, with 834 patents being granted to residents of the region.

- Although Montreal ranks 16th among the 75 largest urban areas of North America by population, it is 40th in terms of traffic congestion.

- Following a national trend, property crime rate is down. The region's rate declined to its lowest level in 15 years, ranking Montreal among the safest large urban regions.

However, the report also points to a number of challenges:

- In the metropolitan area, close to 24% of families were in the low-income category in 2005, and 57% of those had children. A quarter of these were single-parent families.

Cleveland and Pittsburgh are used to seeing each other as rivals, but two young congressmen are leading an effort to bridge the legendary divide.

Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Niles, and Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Aliquippa, Pa. whose districts meet at the state line have proposed an economic partnership between the regions, which are both struggling as their traditional industrial bases fade.

In a special daylong work session at Youngstown State University Monday, some 100 hand-picked business, education and philanthropic leaders were brought together by Ryan and Altmire to discuss the formation of a ''Tech Belt'' from Northeast Ohio to Western Pennsylvania.

The goal is to create jobs, attract businesses and lure venture capital by playing on the size and strength of the ''mega-region.''

''To me, this is about all the players in this great corridor figuring out how to unleash the potential of this region, '' Ryan said. ''Can we all survive alone? Sure. We can survive. Can we reach our full potential alone? No. We can't.''

...

''Our region, this wonderful community that stretches from Lake Erie to the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, has all too often looked to the past as a time of prosperity and a time when we were defined by steel and coal, '' Ryan told the gathering.

Monday's forum, he said, was the first step toward thinking of Cleveland and Pittsburgh as a single ''economic unit, able to compete with Shanghai and Mumbai, '' he said, referring the modern industrial rise of China and India.

Ryan reminded those present that the region was ''the very center of American innovation and industrialization in the 20th century.''

That foundation remains, he said, but it needs to be transformed into a ''more enduring economic model that will prosper in the global marketplace.'' ...

Increasing collaboration is also evident among regional agencies and organizations that are engaged in economic development. Preliminary ideas are currently being considered for sharing information about strategic goals and objectives for economic development as well as finding a process that will enable all of the organizations and agencies to identify two or three common goals on which they can all work together. This is another good example of emerging regional collaboration.

The third example that reflects a philosophy of collaboration is the recently released report from the 21st Century Government Committee, Reinventing Lucas County Government: A Strategy for Our Future (Aug. 21, 2007), commissioned by Ben Konop, Lucas County Commissioner. Following its charge, the committee studied local governments “in order to identify areas of potential collaboration.” The co-chairs of the committee, Jim Holzemer and Benjamin F. Marsh, stated clearly and correctly at the outset of their report that “intergovernmental cooperation is vital to the future success of Lucas County. The 20th Century paradigm of government no longer serves the public efficiently.”

Nowhere is this more true than Toledo, Lucas County and Northwest Ohio. It would be fair to say that the issue goes far beyond “efficiency” in the provision of public services. The 20th Century government paradigm is one of multiple competing and sometimes conflicting jurisdictions. Such jurisdictions cannot successfully compete with metropolitan regions that have developed ways for their units of local government to cooperate, collaborate and consolidate. Collaboration is not only a matter of efficiency and simple economics; it is also a philosophy and mode of governing that is attractive to new businesses, successful corporations as well as citizens of the larger regional community. As citizens, we want to see our local governments working collaboratively.

Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser said Thursday that he expects his "15-year struggle" to introduce reason to the city's economic development and incentive practices to end in the afternoon when the City Council considers policy recommendations that a council committee endorsed Wednesday.

"I think we do better in the economic development area when we're focused, controlled and disciplined, " Funkhouser told a breakfast meeting of the Kansas City Area Development Council at the Westin Crown Center Hotel.

Funkhouser, who participated in a panel discussion that also included the mayors of Overland Park, Independence and Kansas City, Kan., also said he thinks regional cooperation is crucial to the metropolitan area's future prosperity.

"In the global marketplace, we compete together, " he said.

Quality of life is the most important metric, he said.

"We need to change the way we think about economic development, " he said. "We have thought about economic development almost entirely in terms of incentives."

Funkhouser said the area's two most important needs to be competitive are higher education -- "a major research institution" -- and "excellent regional transit."

Joe Reardon, mayor and CEO of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kan., said mass transit needs to be unified. Three public transit systems serve Wyandotte County, Reardon said.

Overland Park Mayor Carl Gerlach said the city is spending more than $1 million studying its Metcalf Avenue corridor. The future of Metcalf, long a main artery through Overland Park, probably will include improved mass transit to speed traffic, Gerlach said.

Gerlach also echoed Funkhouser's ideas about incentives. He railed against what he sees as area cities' growing competition to lure companies from their neighbors.

...

"The world has changed, " he said. "We are reacting to that change. We aren't leading that change."

A few months back, the SouthCoast had a collective chuckle over the foibles of tony little Marion, where in the midst of a heated discussion about whether to allow a doughnut shop in town, a few of the locals grumbled they didn't want their elegant little town becoming another Fairhaven or Wareham.

While it was good fun for the rest of the region to have a laugh at Marion's expense, there was something more than a little troubling about the entire conversation: We are a provincial bunch around here, and we pay a price for it.

If one lives in Dartmouth, one worries about Dartmouth schools, Dartmouth taxes, Dartmouth roads and police and firefighters. It's the same in each of our communities, which all see themselves as largely self-contained mini-states, each distinct and often in competition with its neighbors.

There is something charming in that because it means that we identify strongly with our communities and, to a certain extent, with our neighbors.

There is a downside too, though, because we miss so many opportunities to operate more efficiently, save ourselves some money, and market ourselves as an entire region. The result is we pay higher taxes and lose a lot of our potential political clout because we often fail to speak with one voice.

MassINC, the nonprofit public interest think tank that does good work across the commonwealth in identifying threats, opportunities, problems and solutions that are intended to improve our government, our economy, our education and our future, was down in Fall River last week to convene with UMass Dartmouth a conversation about ways that Fall River and New Bedford can better take advantage of their geography, history, populations and other assets to which the region we call SouthCoast can lay claim.

Story... WHEN ART COLLINS joined the regional planning district commission, each city had its own postmark, it was a long- distance call from Kempsville to Suffolk, Norfolk and Virginia Beach were still in a bitter water war and Hampton Roads was the name only of a bridge-tunnel.

A lot of what passed back in 1970 as the way things were done, in hindsight, now looks myopic, even petty. In the almost 40 years since, it's hard to think of a civic, political or business leader who has done more than Collins to remake Tidewater into Hampton Roads.

Next May, Collins retires as executive director of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, but leaves behind a public appetite for regional problem-solving that was unimaginable when he arrived here, fresh out of the Army and full of Boston spunk.

It's a measure of Collins' persuasiveness that the commission has no authority to compel anyone to do anything at all, except to face the facts unearthed relentlessly by his small, think-tank staff.

Decade by decade, the drip-drip-drip logic of their studies, and the political reasoning that followed, slowly has prodded 16 feudal communities of radically different size and nature into a loose municipal confederacy. There's still a lot of stumbling and fumbling, but the trend is unmistakable: The communities of Hampton Roads are learning to think and act together, and to speak to the rest of the nation and world in a single voice.

Not a small number of local and state politicians will be overjoyed to see Collins exit the stage. Collins has no constituency but the future, so there were inevitable collisions with politicians riveted on the next election. And his total command of all things regional made him infuriatingly hard to spin. ...

Gary V. Hodge, who built his career as the paid executive director of the Tri-County Council for Southern Maryland until his contract was not renewed in 1998, could be installed as the regional planning body's chairman in December.

The council's current chairman, St. Mary's County Commissioner Larry Jarboe (R-Mechanicsville), announced at last week's council meeting in Lexington Park that he intends to step down this year.

According to the council's bylaws, the next chairman must be from Charles County. Jarboe's predecessor as council chair, David Hale, was a commissioner from Calvert County.

Now a county commissioner from Charles, Hodge (D-St. Charles) is the leading contender to be elected chairman of the council, officials said. The council's membership includes elected officials from Charles, Calvert and St. Mary's and its operations are financed by the three governments.

Charles's representatives on the council -- including the county commissioners, state legislators and at-large members -- must nominate someone to become chairman. The council membership will vote on the nomination at its December meeting, said Wayne Clark, the council's executive director.

Although Charles officials have not discussed the issue, commissioners President Wayne Cooper (D-At Large) said Hodge is almost certain to get the county's nod, considering his extensive tenure with the council. For several years, Hodge has worked as a regional planning consultant, and since being elected commissioner last fall, has represented the county commissioners on the Tri-County Council's executive board.

"Normally the person who holds the position representing the county goes into the chairman's position, which would be Commissioner Hodge, " Cooper said. "I'm not expecting him not to want to be chairman. I expect him to be very interested in the position, and I expect him to go for it."

That was some kaffeeklatsch the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce threw on Thursday: a thousand or so people filling one of the town's watering holes and buzzing about the state of the region — and whether Ron Sims had just turned in his King County citizenship.

County Executive Sims had, that morning, released a column on his strongly held opposition to the Nov. 6 roads and transit package — $18 billion or so of new stuff for transportation from Snohomish County to Tacoma. ...

The first of these Chamber gatherings took place in 1882 and daringly secured $12, 000 for Seattle to become the mail-delivery base to Alaska, beating out Portland.

Seattle has not looked back. Soon, the Gold Rush came, and then Pacific commerce, then the wars and commercial aviation's birth.

Scott E. Carson, executive vice president of Boeing, took us on a little trip to the days of forests and fish, up to the new Boeing 787, a miniature model of which was on table after table. Carson remembered the old, noisy jets and their plumes of black smoke that trailed the skies.

"We blew it, " he said of the aviation industry, where quieter airplanes, more efficient and cleaner, are now entering the market. Carson's talk was about the aviation industry's responsibilities in a world where global warming touches every move we make.

Carson also called on the region to invest in a "single, integrated transportation plan" that would help rid Puget Sound's communities of their bottlenecks and mind-numbing congestion.

Speakers before him entertained the same theme of history, about some bad decisions in the past and the steadfastness needed for decisions to be made soon.

But this is a region uncertain what its leadership wants, what is expected of us and where the milk went sour.

Gov. Christine Gregoire, disagreeing with fellow Democrat Ron Sims, said Monday that public safety and the Puget Sound economy could take a big hit if the region's voters don't approve a tax package for transit and highways.

She raised the image of the Aug. 1 interstate bridge collapse in Minneapolis and said, "Mother Nature lurks behind us, " waiting to bring bridges crashing down here if the region doesn't quickly deal with its crumbling infrastructure.

In November, voters in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties will decide the fate of an $18 billion package of road and transit projects.

For taxpayers in the region, that would mean a sales-tax increase of six-tenths of a cent, about $150 a year for the average household, and an annual tax on vehicles of $8 per $1, 000 of value.

North Carolina’s Northeast Commission is forming alliances with those in the biotechnology industry in an effort to help farmers diversify uses for their land and further attract biotechnology companies to the region. In a meeting last week, the Northeast Commission led a forum with biotechnology consultants and regional stakeholders to validate a new industry niche in the biotechnology arena for North Carolina’s Northeast Economic Development Region. “Our job at the Northeast Commission is to increase the region’s capacity for new jobs and to diversify our economy. We have a tremendous number of assets and resources in our region that, when combined, offer us a world class niche in our economy, ” says Vann Rogerson, Commission President & CEO. “We even want to find ways for farmers to diversify uses for their land and identify our niche in supporting biotechnology development in the region.”

The group is also working to develop a plan for new technologies to be researched and to determine how to better link these resources together to collectively offer an enticing business venture to prospective bio companies. Dr. Ron Heiniger oversees North Carolina State University’s agricultural research and support operating at the Vernon James Research Center in Roper and is a strong proponent of the regional initiative. In 2005, the Northeast Commission, NCSU and North Carolina Department of Agriculture, along with many of the attending stakeholders, successfully recruited Ventria, a California biotech company, to grow rice in the northeastern region of North Carolina. “This company asked our area to grow bio-engineered rice that produces proteins valuable to the nutraceuticals industry. From this experience, we have seen a real opportunity for a new niche in plant-made biotech products for the northeast region, ” says Heiniger. The NCSU staff at the Vernon James Center grow plants for applied research to help farmers stay current in the latest technologies.

A regional grant from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center along with funds from the Northeast Commission has enabled the region to look at the development of the biotech industry in the Northeast Region from a scientific and economic perspective. RTI, a Raleigh based world renowned independent research organization with a distinguished history in scientific research and technology development, is studying the region and will make recommendations for biotech development specific to North Carolina’s Northeast. RTI will assess the assets of the region and match the strengths of North Carolina’s Northeast to projects in the industry. The recent meeting is an important step in this process....

10. U.S. regional communities - sub-State, State or multi-State -in news articles. Highlighted words are Google search terms. In this and the following section, links to websites of organizations are added to the news excerpt when this is the first time an organization has been found. A goal of this newsletter is to find every regional council in the U.S. in a news story. In most cases, where a full name is present a Google search will quickly get one to that organization.

Dave Burr, the executive director of the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council, died unexpectedly on Thursday morning. Burr, 56, collapsed while walking his dogs with his wife, Derek, late Wednesday evening. He died several hours later of an aortic aneurism. ...

"That's part of the reason for [Perata's] regional approach, " said Phil Isenberg, who heads a high-level group advising the governor on water policy. "The other part is that there is a general rule in California water politics that everyone is in favor of building things where they might benefit, as long as they don't have to pay very much to get the benefit. What Perata is doing, very intelligently in my view, is calling their bluff. He's saying, 'Let's earmark money for regional projects where there is a matching cost, and see who is out the for real.'" Isenberg noted that the state's own water-policy guide, the DWR's 2005 State Water Plan, is supportive of a regionalized system. ...

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper told Birmingham area community, business and elected leaders today that being mayor is much like running a restaurant -- you don't want to make enemies. For that reason, Hickenlooper, who ran six restaurants in the metro Denver area before being elected to office, said he has approached his relationship with the mayors of the 32 surrounding communities as a partnership. ...

The Northwest Arkansas Council wants to present a proposal for a Regional Mobility Authority to the quorum courts of Benton and Washington counties ... Authorities would have the right to put sales tax, toll road and other financing proposals for roads before the voters ...

.14Lt. Gov. listens to regional concernsThe Republican - MassLive.com - Springfield, MA, USALinda Dunlavy of the Franklin Regional Council of Governments explained how the volunteer group has struggled since the Franklin County Commission formally ...

.17DC region produces more carbon dioxide than many countries Examiner-com - USAWashington region, with its crawling traffic and several coal-fired power plants, produces more carbon dioxide than several medium-size European countries, according to a new study of pollution. Estimates produced by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments...

.19Brownfields input sought by councilBlueRidgeNow.com - Hendersonville, NC, USAThe Land-of-Sky Regional Council ... is pursuing two Brownfields Assessment Grants in the total amount of $400, 000 to expand economic development and technical services provided by the Regional Brownfields Initiative. ...

.21Facing the futureRichmond Register - Richmond, KY, USASome panelists cited a need to move toward more regionalized operations with multiple agencies in the future to expand opportunities for resources. ...

.22Forum Held to Discuss Regional Health DepartmentWFMZ-TV Online - Allentown, PA, USALocal public health departments. Their role is to prevent disease and protect against health emergencies. But believe it or not, more than two-thirds of the region's population lives in areas with limited or no public health services. ...

A panel will discuss unifying Trumbull and Mahoning counties' 911 centers. The conference is part of the chamber's effort to promote regionalizationthat its officials say will save ...

.24Personal Property regionalizesThe Dolphin - Groton, CT, USAIn keeping with the on-going Air Force personal property regionalization effort, the NSB New London Personal Property function, will be regionalizing with ...

.25Free wireless Internet months awayLivingston Daily - Livingston, MI, USAThe Regional Cooperation Group started the ball rolling on this project a year ago and have reached out to other government agencies to assist them. ...

.26Integrated localities feed off others' successRichmond Times Dispatch - Richmond, VA, USAQ. Does the Richmond region need more regional cooperation to create job opportunities? The Richmond area has been designated as a metropolitan area because ...

.28In NM, long haul is easy rideArizona Republic - Phoenix, AZ, USAThe Maricopa Association of Governments is overseeing that study, which is expected to be completed by year's end. Commuter rail has been at the forefront ...

11. Other in the news: Highlighted words are Google search terms.

.10Regional rift tears at fabric of BelgiumUSA Today - USA... online petition was launched by trade unions, authors, artists and others asking Belgian citizens to sign up in opposition to the collapse of the country or splits into further regionalization. ...

.11Nearly 100 Special Zones in Three YearsDonga-com - Seoul, South KoreaNearly 100 special economic zones for regional development (referred to as special zones, hereafter) have been established over the past three years ... diluting the initial intent to lay grounds for region-specific development and is leading to negative effects. ...

.12ARC pushes one-ticket public transportTVNZ - New ZealandThe Transport Services Licensing Bill would give regional councils the power to enforce quality and performance standards for all operators. It also requires companies to produce an integrated ticket system....

World Bank environmental economist Kirk Hamilton and his team in the bank's environment department have found that most of humanity's wealth isn't made of physical stuff. It is intangible. In their extraordinary but vastly underappreciated report, Where Is The Wealth Of Nations?: Measuring Capital for the 21st Century, Hamilton's team found that "human capital and the value of institutions (as measured by rule of law) constitute the largest share of wealth in virtually all countries." ...

.16Regional pressure can change BurmaThe Age - Melbourne, Victoria, AustraliaThere is now an opportunity for a co-ordinated regional response — with Australia playing a significant role — to press for lasting reform. ...

.19Natural Competitive Advantage of BioregionsEnvironment News Service - USAIn the decades ahead, in the face of global warming, increasing energy prices, and a growing global disparity between rich and poor, bioregions have a natural competitive advantage. ...

12. Blogs: Highlighted words are Google search terms.

.10Regionalism Is Dead -- Time To Move OnBy Craig(Craig) I was once a champion of regionalism, consolidation we call it now. From the standpoint of efficiency and government spending, reducing the number of overlapping governments and jurisdictions makes perfectly good sense; ...

.11Northampton Plays Host To Lt. Gov. Tim Murray's Listening TourBy P. Mastrangelo(P. Mastrangelo) Specifically, the current model of the Franklin Regional Council of Governments. Sometime before all the issues noted above were aired, Linda Dunlavy of the Franklin Regional Council of Governments, spoke at length about the ways in ...

.12Regionalism redefinedBy editor While there is a clear political advantage to each region now having an additional 'ally' around the national table, it can be argued that it is those regions which have felt more distant from the notion of regionalism – East of England ...

.14Regional CooperationBy Sam Spies Elected officials from Orange County, Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough gathered tonight to discuss issues of regional interest at an Assembly of Governments. Chatham County has expressed interest in using land that OWASA owns on ...

.15"More innovation through regional cooperation" EU Commissioner By Developer(Developer) European Commissioner responsible for Regional Policy Danuta Hubner has, during the EU Interregional Cooperation Forum 2007 in Lisbon on the 20th September, has launched the new interregional cooperation programme for 2007-2013, ...

.16Super Regions Bring Super-sized Challenges For MemphisBy Smart City Consulting(Smart City Consulting) It'sa given that regions are the competitive units for the global economy, but while Memphis still struggles to come to grips with what this really means, a new reality is unfolding to complicating our competitiveness even more. ...

PURPOSE: This hearing will examine approaches to local government efficiency issues including merger, consolidation, regionalized government, shared services and smart growth. ...

.18 Regionalism in our countryBy Nikhil(Nikhil) A serious problem to put across you people: Regionalism in our country.. It can be understand as a Virus for the betterment of the society. Because anyhow it is applying the barriers for some people who doesn't belong to the particular ...

.19The ripple effects of the Bologna Process in the Asia-PacificBy globalhighered The Bologna Process, formally initiated in 1999, has inspired a series of substantial albeit uneven reforms in the European higher education landscape, leading to the emergence of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) that stretches from western Portugal to easternmost Russia. Reforms within the EHEA, and European Commission-funded linkages schemes with various regions (including Asia and Africa) in the world, ...

.23Is the New Regionalism Progressive?- school of planningBy DAAP students of culture(DAAP students of culture) If by progressive regionalism we mean a concern with the root causes of poverty, social injustice/inequity, and environmental degradation, one of the most important considerations should be the condition of rural areas. ...

.24NWDA to challenge business publishers... and bloggers?By Stephen Newton Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) How-Do, the website that has quickly established itself as north west England's primary source of media industry news, has revealed that the North West Regional Development Agency (NWDA) is ...

.27The Neighborhood Car? Is it Time?By Prof. Goose Before closing, I note that Neighborhood Car policies, like many of the other policy recommendations the GTFGW is devising, would work best if adopted nationally or regionally. Perhaps Wisconsin could be a leader in this area. ...

We analyze the regional distribution and the effect of people in creative occupations based on data for more than 450 regions in eight European countries. The geographic distribution of the creative class is highly uneven. The creative class is not attracted to highly urbanized regions per se, but rather a climate of tolerance and openness seem to be rather important factors. We find that the creative class has a positive and significant effect on employment growth and new business formation at the regional level. Human capital as measured by creative occupation outperforms indicators that are based on formal education.

A government report issued last week says it could take 150 years and billions of dollars for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect key portions of the Prairie Pothole region to sustain current duck populations.

But the agency doesn't have that much time, or the money, to achieve its goal of protecting an additional 12 million acres in that region, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

"Some emerging market forces, however, suggest that the service may have only several decades before most of its goal acreage is converted to agricultural uses, " the report states.

The 64-million-acre Prairie Pothole region, which includes portions of Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas and Montana, is the breadbasket of duck production in the United States. It provides breeding grounds for more than 60 percent of key migratory bird species.

Since the 1950s, the Fish and Wildlife Service, through its small wetlands acquisition program, has permanently protected about 3 million acres of wetlands and grasslands. But to sustain the region's current population of 4.2 million breeding duck pairs, the agency's goal is to permanently protect up to an additional 12 million acres.

The pace of protection could be increased marginally by using existing money more efficiently, but the GAO said that with only about $17 million yearly for land acquisitions, "the limited resources pose a substantial challenge."

The GAO said one way to increase the effort would be to get additional dollars. Some possibilities: ...

Other menu sections available from this link include: regions, regional, regional community, region, Regional Council, regional developmentand other search terms. They can be sorted by date or relevance. These are among the 50 search terms I use to produce this newsletter.

My name is Tom Christoffel. I've worked in the field of intergovernmental cooperation since 1973. As a consequence, "I see regions work." Regional Community Development News is published weekly based on news reports as of Wednesday.

Making visible analysis and actions at multi-jurisdictional regional scales is its purpose. "Think globally, act locally" was innovative in its time. Today the local scale is often too small to address today's needs and opportunities. "Think local planet, act regionally, " is my candidate paradigm. (No one said we're only allowed one paradigm.)

We can see that “regional communities” are organized locally and now act both to avoid tragedy in the commons and gain benefits. An effective multi-jurisdictional regional community has DNA: it is geographically Defined; has a common Name and its Alignment is inclusive of smaller communities and participatory in larger communities. So, by scanning this compilation, reading articles and checking organizations - you too will be able to see the regional communities that already exist.

News references are found using the Google News search service. Media article links are “fair use” to transform globally scattered reports to make regional approaches visible. Links go to the publisher and do not compete with it. Such publishers are likely to have related stories and thus be seen by new customers. “Regional” is an emerging news category. There is no charge for this service and no profit is made from its use, though any user can become more aware of the topic itself.

The system is based on a geocode scheme set up for earth that focuses on established political boundaries as a basis for regional grouping of nations, states and localities. It is decimal system based to take advantage of the sort criteria for numbers in computers. It utilized the Sector Group and Region codes of the United Nations and ISO. Geographic information system technology does not solve the problem, but its tools can be used with the geocodes.

The geocode system effectively organizes Wikipedia entries as a library management and the geocodes can be used for data aggregation. This has been developed under a Creative Commons license and would benefit from a global network implementation where local users cooperatively related subnational geographic regions and component political geography.

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Earth ( we know its a spherical whole)

Humanity's Local Planet

Universe Man at the Boundary

Local Planet - Regional Space

Our Local Planet has systems of Political Geographies which combine as Regional/Greater Communities

Universe Man's place on earth is local and regional silmultaneously depending upon the system of regions, sub-regions of the planet as local wholes: continents, nations, states, provinces, districts, counties, shires, municipalities. etc., which have local regions within and between them which are capable of being greater communities at many scales.

Based on my experience as a regional planner and agency director, 1973 -2008, and in recognition of emerging "regional communities," I developed three thoughts about community that relate to the challenge of working across-boundaries as greater or regional communities. The thoughts/theses apply for communities at the scale of bonding or bridging social capital as defined by Robert D. Putnam, which is alternately local or regional. (link below)

As of 2011, considering the global financial crisis brought about by pursuit of the "profit motive," it struck me that this has come to dominate modern life. This is a relatively new invention of civilization and wasn't a concern for most of the time that homo sapiens has been on the planet.

The three thoughts below that had emerged in my experience of working on regional cooperation now represent what I now posit as the "community motive." Concern about "profit" can emerge within an established community over time, but, to my mind the "profit motive" does not exist in the wild.

1) Community precedes cooperation.2) Community is how life solves all problems.3) Security is the primary purpose of community.

These three thoughts, theses if you will, are the basis of the "community motive." Following is some exposition about each one.

As I see it, security has always been the priority for humans since the plains of Africa. That's why communities first seek to establish defensible boundaries. After the basics are in place, security focus shifts to the social and economic. Boundaries work like the membrane in the osmosis experiment most of us have seen in a science class. The membrane is a filter that lets the good things pass through, but keeps unwanted things out. (Osmosis -YouTube - 45 sec.)

The evolved political boundaries of today have consequence. The rules change when you cross them. Though marked on the ground and fortified in some instances, they are conceptual, as pictured above, with Universe Man. The boundary divides the space between local, that within, and regional, everything outside, as labeled in the second panel. The third panel repeats the image within, to show, without graphic elegance, that the land on which Universe Man sits is regional at another scale, as determined by other boundaries, and another area that's local. A territory is both local and regional, depending upon the perspective.

Communities of communities, “regional communities” are greater communities organized to solve a problem, be it managing a watershed, strengthening an economic cluster or ensuring peer competition for school sports. Regional boundaries can be imposed for administrative purposes within states, but for these to be a basis for effective cooperation, a greater community sense is needed for that geography among the people. This is true for multi-state and multi-national regional communities as well. The leaders with such a vision can build a regional community by finding that which is already in place.

This is not to suggest that community is easy to build in order to solve problems. In a crisis, humans of any culture, belief or politics can quickly come together and self-organize to save themselves and others. It was the on-the- ground response to the 9/11 attacks that demonstrated to me the deep responsiveness of human community, as well as the fundamental importance of security. Community is how humans have always survived. This, I think, extends to all life forms.